Archetypes in Contemporary
Science Fiction

I am sentient. Therefore my head, fingers, toes, internal organs, et al, are also sentient - as parts of me.

In Quantum physics, John Bell's Theorum has mathematically proved that all things in the Universe are connected - like fingers and toes. If one accepts that the Universe is sentient (since sentient beings do not exist separately from it), then archetypes/gods/goddesses/nature spirits/et al, ergo exist externally as well as internally in the mind of the beholder.

ARCHETYPES IN CONTEMPORARY SCI-FI

On the TechnoPagans email discussion list on Yahoogroups, the subject of "mythological and shamanic archetypes" inevitably led those of us who are avid science fiction fans to explore the resonances between characters from television series' such as Star Trek, Star Trek Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, Babylon Five, Farscape and Stargate SG1 with archetypes from classical Earth mythologies.

The most obvious example are Vulcans, whose strict adherence to the yogic and Buddhist principle of "non-attachment" clearly demonstrates where their author-creators gleaned the inspiration for this fictional race. Throw in the Greek Pan for the pointed ears and there you have it: a race of beings waging a perpetual internal battle to suppress the Pan-side of their instinctive inclinations.

Who amongst us, beneath all of our carefully carved social conditioning, does not suppress the urges for primal "innappropriate" or even "sociopathic" behaviours when the pressures of living weigh heavily? We relate to Vulcans because we ARE Vulcans - worshipping "rationality" and condemning those who display politically incorrect emotions as "pathological", and with whom "normals" should not associate or risk being tarred with the same brush.

Klingons resonate with the archetype of Japanese Samurai, as well as with the Celtic and Nordic warrier races of Earth. Klingons love opera (the Wagnerian variety), practice Marshal Arts, and have a rich mythology that is clearly a composite of the aforementioned cultures.

Elabourate Ritual plays a role in virtually every activity, from the most enobling to the utterly mundane, typical of all ancient shamanic cultures from the Native American to the Asiatic, where the cosmic connexion is still active in the conscious minds of the average individual in daily life. We relate to Klingons (or individual Klingons like Worf) because they are able to acceptably live out behaviours which mainstream humans are culturally denied.

Romulans are the space version of what would have happened had the Roman Empire never fallen. They are the descendants of rebel Vulcans who could not bear to sacrifice the richness of sensory and emotional spontaneity, when their Vulcan kin chose the ascetic path of achieving peace through ruthless self-denial. Romulans are not "bad". They are us: emotional beings seeking sensual diversity in an overly-ordered controlling society with strict social mores and taboos.

Even the human Federation captains are modelled after benign despotic gods and goddesses (James Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard, Catherine Janeway, Ben Sisko) of the Greeks, Romans, pre-Celts and other earthly archetypes. They come complete with classical "human" personal foibles which form part of their individual heroic personalities. They joined the military to be able to explore interstellar space, and they violate the "Prime Directive" as their personal values dictate, without guilt or hesitation. They are heroic in the true definition of the word.

Babylon Five is a complex tapestry of Arthurian legend interwoven with characters and plots from every culture on Earth. Minbari are yet another race steeped in tradition and mysticism, even down to their seashell-shaped heads - one hears echoes of the universe in a seashell, right? Their Tibetan style costumes provide another eartly link to a great and ancient terrestrial culture. There is something very TechnoPagan about their technology, combining Pagan Ritual with state-of-the-art science.

Delenn and Linear are diplomatic representatives of the Religious Caste. They are in constant political struggle against the Warrior Caste, a heirarchy of the military structure of their planet, virtually identical to the generals and Defense Departments of contemporary Earth as well as to parallels in Celtic and Nordic mythology. In the background of their Grey Council (Parliament) are the third Caste, the Workers, who are always outvoted by the Warriors although forming the majority of the population.

In the episode in which the Elder Races of the Galaxy meet after losing the Great Shadow War against the younger races of B5's intersteller United Nations clone, we encounter Light Beings (the Vorlons - Kosh's inscrutable Zenlike race), the insectoid Shadows who ruthlessly believe in surival of the fittest, and other classical archetypes debating the nature of sentient evolution. Just as Earth mythology has faded into obscurity in our modern society, the fictional Elders withdraw from the forefront of events, to unobtrusively observe the humanoid races developing in their own ways. The gods and goddesses have had their day.

The television series Stargate SG1 is an archeological delight, bringing to life rational, plausible, PRACTICAL explanations for all things of an ancient Egyptian context, as well as several other ancient cultures including the Celtic. Every new episode is a fresh exploration of a mythical ancient Earth culture and its unexplained artefacts. The writers really do their homework, bringing to the public a "virtual tour" of aspects of theoretical archaeology in each episode.

The most intriguing SG1 theme, for me, is the Quantum Mirror. The QM is a supercomputer, complete with tuning device, enabling the traveller to leap from one parallel universe to another. It is an animated illustration of Hugh Everett's Multiverse Quantum Theory. It is where Lewis Carroll meets alien high-tech. It is the intellectual version of a similar device on the Canadian series "Sliders".

When another Samantha Carter (Carter as in Howard Carter the egyptologist) emerges from her QM to escape from an Earth where the Goua'uld (the baddies with the flying pyrimids)have taken over, the team debates the ethics of interfering in an alternative reality. They agree that the most successful reality is the only one that matters.

They base this on the fact that the QM displays a gateway to all of the choices not chosen; the roads not taken, and the repurcussions, not only for that individual, but for the whole universe bifurcating infinitely to accommodate the multiplicity of ALL individual choices affecting all others. If you win, another you loses. It is logical to back the winners.

Another philosohical point is made when Sam 2 experiences "the rubber band effect" back to her universe, but her male companion (who is dead in Sam 1's universe) does not. It seems, at least in the mind of the script writers, that two versions of oneself cannot exist in the same universe. You either have to kill your other version or make the visit a daytrip.

Symbionts (two sentient entities sharing one body) are a popular theme in comtemporary sci-fi, yet few archetyal references exist in classical mythology apart from shamanic contexts, who do not physically or permanently share the body of the "speaker". The Greek Delphic Oracles, whilst not fitting the “permanent” criterium, are perhaps the best known example of this genre.

Synbionts sacrifice their own mobility to spend the rest of their lives virtually immobile inside the host's body. For DS9's Dax, a Tril, and SG1's Gua'uld this is a positive step from a limited sphere of functionality, living solo in an aquatic environment to a symbiotic lifestyle in a landbased environment.

For Farscape's Pilot, merging with Moya means sitting at his console, wired up to Moya's brain until he dies. Pilot, being inside Moya the living ship, is the symbiont. But due to the relative size of humanoids (himself included) and sentient beings the size of a galaxy class starship, Pilot is the interface, the oracle acting for both partners in the symbiosis. A new perspective on relativity.

The Ship and Brede the Shipmate in Julian May's "Saga of the Exiles" series of books are another example of the Farscape symbiont scenario, perhaps being the prototype which inspired the Farscape writers. Tril consider it a great honour to be paired with a symbiont. They face no discrimination from other races who never accuse them of sacrificing their "personal independence" for symbiosis. Many of their own race are overtly jealous of the lucky few who get to be "paired", symbionts being in short supply on the Tril homeworld.

But Gua'uld are the "enemy" in SG1, even the benevolent Tok'ra, although Dr. Sam's dad appears to be a token exception, as is SG1 team member Tilk. Leaving aside the issue of the Gua'uld's ultra-aggressive policy of colonialism for the moment, why is having a symbiotic little dragon that can heal your body whenever it is damaged considered undesireable?

Simbiont entities are just other sentient races doing what comes naturally to their species, like the Tril. The Gua'uld have an ancient culture endowed with highly advanced technology combined with magnificently stylised art. They have the computerised technopagan sarcophagos that can make the host young again or even restore life to the recently deceased. They have elegant fashion statements and a grand sense of style in everything from furniture to jewellery to weapons.

The larval dragonettes inside the Jaffa provide all the health-enhancing properties of the mature Gua'ulds without interrupting the private individuality of the hosts. Yet the prejudice against joining with larvae is as pervasive as that against the ruling class of the Gua'uld.

I suggest that the difference in attitude lies in the fact that DS9 is set in the 24th century and SG1 in present-day Earth; an Earth dominated by the US military mentality. If such beings were not fictional, there would be people queueing up for miles to be joined to them and I would be at the head of queue.

Although the "Remillard" novels of my favourite author Julian May have not yet made the transition to film or television, May's flesh-and-blood living archetypes of pre-Celtic, Celtic and other European cultures are presented in a forthright manner that no textbook can match. I highly recommend "The Many Coloured Land" as the starting point in the extended "Saga of the Exiles" series of novels.

From the personal correspondence that I have shared with Julian May, I learnt that her "Path" is Chardinian Catholicism. Teilhard de Chardin, the 20th century radical anthropologist (and Catholic priest) whose works were banned from publication by the Church until after his death, was an extraordinary visionary. He "saw" into the very nature of the cosmos, recognising fractal archetypes long before Benoit Mandelbrot reached adulthood. I favour May's version of earth history because it flows from Chardin's logical cosmology.

Light Beings (non-corporeal races) are abundantly represented in contemporary sci-fi. There are the "Q" from the Startrek spinoffs, modelled after the Greek and Roman pantheons. There are the incidental "one-off" characters who evolve from physical form to energy, like Dr. Beverley Crusher's fleeting love interest: Zalconian John Doe; the cloudlike girlfriend of retired Zephron Cochran in the original ST series; the aforementioned Vorlons, and Stark of Bannock - the knightly partial light being from Farscape: the man in the iron half-mask.

Stark's half-mask shields the part of his temporal body where the raw cosmic energy leaks through. Some might view this emanation as Chakra or Ch'i. His umbilical cord to the enfolded universe is not fully severed. The mask shielded the right side of his head; the non-linear side of his brain. He came from a planet full of people just like himself. Amongst their own species, masks were unnecessary. Stark is a partial Light Being, but he cannot maintain consenual reality's idea of sanity without shielding the most wondrous part of himself. A typical pre-Celtic archetype.

But my favourite Light Being of all remains Voyager's Kes. Even before her metamorphosis to a non-corporeal state, there was something poignantly endearing about Kes, the daring young girl who climbed out of her underworld to the surface above, to see what lay beyond the limitations of her confined culture. Kes's race, like earth's dogs, live for only nine years or so, in a speeded up parallel of a human lifespan. Kes is the archetype of gentle canine, intelligent human and questing medical goddess all in one elegantly devised package.

In the Voyager episode in which Kes morphs into a Light Being, awakening the dormant DNA of her forgotten ancestry, there is an animated sequence by which Kes reaches out with a mental tentacle into Seven's brain to heal her. This sequence is the ultimate visual representation of Redactive Healings, described so vividly in printed words by Julian May's Tanu (Tuatha de Danann) healers. I play this videotaped sequence for my Healing students to explain the non-verbal concept to them. One picture, or three minutes of footage, is worth far more than a thousand words.

Telepathic races are another popular archetypal theme. They include: STNG's Deanna and Glwxana Troi of Beta-zed, Farscape's irreplaceable priestess-healer Zhaan (and the other plant-based Delvians of her Druidic race), and Babylon 5's legion of telepathic archetypes including the religious-caste Minbari, the clairvoyant shaven-headed Centauri women, and the PsiCorps humans of the future, to name but a few.

My favourite male character in all of television sci-fi is undoubtedly Galen the TechnoMage, the ultimate TechnoPagan Druid from Babylon5, portrayed so elegantly by Peter Woodward, who reappeared on the shortlived spinoff series Crusade with his real-life father Edward Woodward, also portraying a TechnoMage, and the aethereal Sophie Ward as Isabelle, the female TechnoMage who communicates from beyond the grave to her true love Galen via subspace binary code. As Galen said: "We are dreamers, shapers, singers, makers" programming "the invocation of equations".

Sentient Androids and Photonics (Holograms) fulfil still another archetype category. Data, Seven-of-Nine, The Borg Queen, Farscape's Moya and her son Tolan, Voyager's The Doctor, and Stanley Kubrick's classic "HAL" are prime examples of this genre. Jordy LaForge with his visor also qualifies under this heading. The "message" is that of slavery vs. equal rights for those who are "different", as in the case of Data and The Doctor. But in general, these characters expand our inner parameters of matter and energy as relating to personality. Just like classical mythological archetypes, these characters have superhuman qualities which are "normal" to themselves.

Another archetype is represented in Deep Space 9's Odo, the shapeshifting liquid man who must pour himself into a bucket at bedtime to get a good night's sleep. Odo's race, The Founders, dwell in a huge living lake on their home planet, in perfect communion as one entity. When a fragment of that unity chooses to leave the "Link" and walk amongst the "solids" to take care of business, a portion of this temporary morphic entity remains mentally joined to the collective mind, except for Odo who preferred being on his own, as any good space station security chief should do. In the DS9 finale, the Chardinian "call" to the Link becomes overpowering and Odo ends his odyssey and finally returns home.

In the Tuatha Creation Myth designed to explain physics and metaphysics to children, the living sentient universe or Mother Tanae is described as a huge female Odo-like shapeshifter filling the entire contents of the space-time continuum, shapeshifting into everything from quarks to plants, animals, people, planets, stars and galaxies simultaneously. Death is described as those fragments of Mother Tanae returning to her unshapeshifted dormant form.

When liquids have sexual intercourse, even with a solid, digital imagery portrays the absolute exquisite perfection of their bodies literally merging into one. This is similar to the mental merging of Julian May's metapsychic races (Tanu and Firvulag), whose orgasmic psychic essences combine in the coital act, whilst the old-fashioned physical joining takes place at the same time. Ultimate Tantric bliss.

The "Link", which comes so naturally and unavoidably to the Founders is the goal of virtually ALL of Earth's religions: Yogic Unity, Christian "grace", Shamanic holism, Nirvana. Next time a child asks the meaning of any of these words, push the videotape of DS9's Link episode into the video recorder and press "play".

The Shapeshifter Link is essentially the metaphor for Creation itself: the all-pervasive amorphus Sentience which manifests itself into the myriad forms of inanimate and animate life composing the contents of the cosmos. Each of us is an Odo; being born and dieing back into the timeless formless "lake" of enfolded shapeshifter-creation.

The Bajoran Prophets aka/ "aliens in the wormhole" pose some intriguing questions about what earth people for example, assume to be religious issues. Are all "gods" including the alleged Judeo-Christian Big "G" nought but Light Beings mistaken by primitive societies for divinity? Is Von Daniken correct after all? Are the megalithic artefacts of Earth gateways to the gods, as are the Orbs of the wormhole beings and the stargates of Stargate SG1?

The Prophets are non-linear non-matter sentient Beings. According to the DS9 writers, they dwell in the liminal spaces between our physical universe and a timeless domain where past, present and future are merely the points of focus selected from the ever-present whole. They are embodiments of physicist Roger Penrose's non-linear theory.

The Prophets are eternal, since for them past and present are contained within an endless Now. They, like the "Q Continuum", fit all of the criteria for gods, or at least "angels" common to all Earth religions. Like the biblical pantheon, they have had a civil war and expelled the "Pah Wraiths", an opposing faction of their own kind.

The Prophets are curious about other species and other realms of existence so they built material tools like the orbs and the wormholes to further their urge for exploration. Taking the plot a step further, picture the Prophets as living at the apex of a sphere with conduits radiating in many directions, not just that one route from the Alpha to Delta quadrants of the Milky Way Galaxy, like a huge orange stuck through with skewers of different lengths all merging at the centre, like angling lures. Suddenly, one of the "fish" decides to make contact with them instead of the other way round.

In the pilot episode of DS9, in his encounter with the Prophets, Sisco is repeatedly drawn back into the memory of his wife's death during the great battle with the Borg. Anguished at re-living his most painful memory sequence again and again, he asks the Prophets why they keep bringing him back to that memory. They reply that it is he who takes them there, whenever the memory assails his mind and he starts to live in the past. "But this is not linear", says the Prophet. "No, it isn't" replies Sisco, who adds that he "chooses" to be trapped in a painful time loop rather than allow himself to let go of it.

The message is that we do not live as linearly as we rationally assume we do. Our facility to experience memory flashbacks, be they joyous or tragic, sends our consciousness on a "shamanic journey" from consensually shared linear reality down a rabbit hole to another fix in time. Not only is this personal to the individual but forced upon those in proximity, in a sort of "contact high" (or low). Psychology meets shamanism as traumatic stress disorder. The Prophets may be non-physical but they create technology to interface with the physical universe. They are TechnoMages.

The Bajoran religion is not based upon a belief system or speculation. The nine alien interface devices (orbs) are real solid objects. Open the orb doors, press the start key and one's "shamanic" journey begins. Want to time travel with fully enhanced total recall? Go to the Oracle, I mean Orb of Time. Want a deep spiritual experience? There's an Oracle for that too, and seven other variations to choose from.

Supposing consenual history had played out a different thread and the orbs no longer existed on Bajor. Might the Bajorans construct replicas to keep their religion alive? Representations might include sacred shiny crystals kept in sacred boxes. Or a Eucharistic host in a chalice in a sacred box upon a church altar. What if access codes had been forgotten? Would magick words or mantras or credos be invented in some vain hope of finding the "reboot button" to access the gods again? Would certain individuals with inexpicable "talents" be deified as avatars or Holy Men and Women, in another hope of re-establishing a link to the lost contact?

The Starship Voyager can be compared to a Celtic witches' coven. Janeway is the High Priestess Protector with Chakotay and Tuvok as her High Priests. As in Celtic matriarchal tradition, the male associates are respected and important within the structure of the coven, but the HPS presides as Clann Chieftainess and always has the final word after weighing the advice of her colleagues within the Clann.

Janeway's working motto is "Let's Assume Success!" In TechnoPagan terms, this is her "program" or "spell". Janeway not only puts this Program into practice herself but orders her crew to abide by it. Her advisors remind her to be cautious to avoid the "down" of disappointment should failure occur, but Janeway will have none of it. If failure occurs, she simply re-defines the parameters of the Program for success until she succeeds. And her door is always open to encourage and mind-heal all members of her coven/clann. In the endgame, she used her techno-magick to re-program time itself to keep her oath to bring her Clann home safely.

All trekkies are familiar with the term "Energise!", which literally refers to Becoming Energy for the few seconds during which one travels through the transporter buffers from A to B. Here we have the contemporary word expressing Casteneda's Nagual, the Shamanic concept of "Journeying". Whilst you are in the pattern buffer (the lightshow special effects of de-materialising and re-materialising) you ARE a Light Being.

The trekkie version, like the TechnoPagan or Chaos Magick programming process is brief and to the point, sometimes requiring amended Energisings before success manifests in everyday reality. Success is therefore inversely proportional to the degree one "tries" to succeed. This is echoed even in the Christian bible, in the scene where Jesus meets a second blind man on a road and has to make two efforts of Healing before the man regains visual acuity, proving that all Healers, no matter how powerful, can have "off-days".

One episode of Startrek NG starts out with a young "proto-Vulcan" girl climbing the hills near her Iron Age village to "take the daily readings" of the sun's annual cycle to her planet. Classic Celtic Paganism. Later in the storyline, we meet Nuria, the High Priestess of this clann who is transported up to the Enterprise to dispel the myth that the Federation scientists who were "caught in the act" of observing/spying on her people are "gods".

Surrounded by 24th century technology, Nuria cannot believe that such beings could NOT be gods. Picard unsuccessfully tries to make her see that to a Stone Age proto-Vulcan, her Iron Age culture is "magickal" and "godlike". Only when she wittnesses a death in sickbay, does Nuria comprehend that technology does not equate with immortality or omniscience. The parallels to Van Daniken's interpretation of the bible, as well as other earth legends of mysterious visitors with godlike "powers" provides food for thought.

Another episode of STNG stands out in my mind as an illustration of the power of archetypes and myth in the collective psyche of a culture. Captain Picard becomes stranded on a planet with Dathan, a Tamarian Captain whose language is entirely composed of metaphors from his planet's rich mythological tradition. Tamarians do not say "I feel sad" but say (paraphrase) "Name-of-Hero at the Bridge over the River Whatsit after the Great Battle of Such-and-Such". Every sensation is expressed in terms of a mythological reference.

Picard tells his counterpart the story of Gilgamesh, the Persian epic tale, and by the final scene, both men have learnt to communicate in each other's idiom, the language barrier having been, if not broken, certainly well bent.

To a lesser extent, mythological idioms pervade our various Earth cultures, even though we often do not see the context. We refer to Narsissistic behaviour, Baccanalian orgies, and Olympian egos. Toughminded women are referred to with the derogatory lables of Harpy, Medusa, and Brunhilda.

Contemporary archetypes include Obewan Kenobe, Yoda, Fozzie Bear, Mulan, Peter Pan, the Pokemon pantheon, and an ever-lengthening list of archetypes creeping into our linguistic cultural references from cinema, television and even advertising. How many humans from all sectors of this planet do not, in a stressful moment, look to the sky and intone the immortal words "Beam me up Scotty!"?

No study of contemporary archetypes would be complete without a special mention about Guinan, the enigmatic landlady of the space-pub Ten Forward. Whoopi Goldberg has said that of all the roles she has created, being on a Startrek series was her greatest delight. Guinan the High Priestess/unaccredited therapist/confidante/barmaid/friend there for all who need comfort and guidance. Guinan the wise woman who has lived many centuries, vestige of a conquered Borg-assimilated race, who speaks her mind and always displays quiet dignity and poise. Guinan the sorceress who can send and defend by focusing Energy through her hands. Guinan who can sense the Multiverse!

My alltime favourite sci-fi line which resonates with my own sense of reality is a Guinan line: "It isn't supposed to be like this!" Guinan spoke it when a ship from the past poked through into the present - radically altering the present by its intrusion. Only Guinan sensed the truth, and that this "wrong" reality must be corrected by sending the past back into the past. Of course, she was correct.

Whenever I get the feeling that "it isn't supposed to be like this" I know that it is urgent to get myself back into a more favourable string of the Multiverse, whether the cause is my own error or an external one. Now that Guinan's archetype is woven into the fabric of my life, I shall never feel as alone when these situations occur.

Voyager's Native American Chacotay has an intriging twenty-fourth century gadget called a Kuna, which transmits an impulse to the brain, generating an instantaneous shamanic mental state. All one has to do is place one's hand on the hotzone and off one goes a-journeying. TechnoPsychedelica! And presumably legal too. Can't wait for this one to come on the market!

Medical technology in the twenty-fourth century features many high-tech gadgets that are already appearing in reality in our current era. Yet, in one episode of STNG, the subject of ageing is dealt with in a simple yet elegant manner. Dr. Kate Polasky, on an away-mission, catches a disease causing rapid ageing. The cure is to run her previous DNA pattern through the transporter and voila! she was her old, or rather, young self again.

On this same theme was the episode in which Picard, Guinan, Keiko the botanist wife of Chief O'Brien, and Ensign Ro Laren rematerialise as children (in body only) as the result of a transporter malfunction, and are cured through the method same method as Dr. Kate.

...which makes me wonder why they need doctors at all in the 24th century? Just bung everyone in the transporter buffer to restore youth and health as desired. I feel that this will be the all purpose medical device of the future in reality and wish medical science would hurry up and develop it whilst I may still benefit from it!

"If I take a lamp and shine it towards the wall, a bright spot will appear. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume that the light on the wall is God, But the light is not the goal of the search, it is the result of the search. - G'kar, "Meditations on the Abyss" - Babylon 5.

When interactive talking PC's come on the market at a reasonable price, I want mine to sound like the great unseen Oracle of Wisdom Majel Barrett-Roddenbury:-)